To create better services for users, service designers have to first understand what they want or need. Therefore, research is one of the big activities that any service designer performs.

For existing services, service designers are interested in removing the frustrations of the customer experience. They have to understand what makes customers angry and what pisses them off.

For new services, service designers are interested in determining if the value that the service tries to provide is also felt by the people who use it. Moreover, for new services, they are interested in figuring out if the problem they want to fix, is indeed a real problem or just a fancy idea that nobody cares about.

Service designers use a mix of research methodologies. They use both quantitative and qualitative research tools.

Quantitative research methods are things like surveys and statistics. These methods are interested in what can be measured. They will give service designers trends that show what people like and dislike, and how big the percentage is.

But service designers also use a lot of qualitative research methods like interviews and observations. These methods are interested in what people feel and experience. Those things can’t be measured with numbers, but explain why people are happy or angry with specific elements of a service.

Often, service designers say that quantitative research tools help them understand what happens and that qualitative research tools help explain why things happen as they do.